Making healthy life choices can increase your energy level, assist in maintaining a healthy body weight and prevent chronic diseases. Simple changes made one step at a time to eating habits and physical activity are not only doable, but also easy to maintain. Walking more, eating fresh fruits and vegetables and increasing water intake may seem like insignificant changes, but when they are made gradually and sustained, the payoffs are huge.

1. Increase the amount of activity you get every day. Instead of sitting in front of the TV in the evening, get active. Walking is an accessible form of low-impact exercise that has numerous health benefits. Walking may help manage your weight, lower low-density lipoprotein cholesterol and decrease blood pressure. Increasing daily steps can be done throughout the day. Taking the stairs, parking farther away from shops or your office, taking a brisk walk on your lunch break or walking to do errands will all add up to more daily steps and better health.

2. Eat more fruits and vegetables in place of less healthy processed and fatty foods. Fruits and vegetables are high in fiber, vitamins and minerals, but low in calories. They can also help prevent cardiovascular disease and increase digestive health. Try to eat at least five servings of fresh fruits and vegetables every day. Fitting in five servings a day may seem like a daunting task, but sneaking in fruits and vegetables is easy. Have blueberries with your breakfast cereal, baby carrots and hummus as a snack and salad greens and tomato on your sandwich. For dinner, grill some asparagus with your chicken or fish, and have a baked apple with cinnamon for dessert.

3. Drink more water. This means choosing water over sugar-sweetened beverages such as sweet tea, soda, fruit juices and sports drinks. Choosing water will not only prevent consumption of liquid calories, but may help you feel fuller and eat less. Aim to drink 48 to 64 ounces of water daily to reap the weight control benefits and ward off dehydration.

Prepare more of your own meals. Cooking more meals at home can help you to take charge of what you're eating and better monitor exactly what goes into your food.

Make the right changes. when cutting back on unhealthy foods in your diet, it is important to replace them with the healthyalternatives. Replacing animal fats with vegetables fats (such as switching butter for olive oil) will make a positive difference to your health. Switching animal fats for refined carbohydrates, though (such as switching your breakfast bacon for a donut), won't lower your risk for heart disease or improve your mood.

Simplify. Instead of being overly concerned with counting calories, think of your diet in terms of large amounts of sugar and salt in packaged food, even food claiming to be healthy.

Focus on how you feel after eating. Water helps flush our systems of waste products and toxins, yet many people go through life dehydrated-causing tiredness, low energy, and headaches. It's common to mistake thirst for hunger, so staying well hydrated will also helpyou make healthier food choices.

Healthy Eating Tip 2: Moderation is key

Try not to thinkof certain foods as "off-limits." When you ban certain foods or food groups, it is natural to want those foods mroe, and then feel like a failure if you give in to temptation. Start by reducing portion sizes of unhealthy foods, you may find yourself craving them less or thinking of them as only occasional indulgences.

Think smaller portions. Serving sizes have ballooned recently. When dining out, choose a starter instead of an entree, slpit a dish with a friend, and don't order supersized anything. At home, visual cues can help with portion sizes-your serving of meat, fish, or chicken should bethe size of a deck of cards and a half cup of mashed potato, rice or pasta is about the size of a traditional light bulb. If you don't feel satisfied at the end of a meal, add more leafy green vegetables or round off the meat with fruit.

Take your time. Stop eating before you feel full. It actually takes a few minutes for your brain to tell your body that it has had enough food, so eat slowly.

Eat with others whenever possible. As well as the emotional benefits, this allows you to model healthy eating habits for your kids. Eating in front of the TV or computer often leads to mindless overeating.

Its not just what you eat, but when you eat

Eat breakfast, and eat smaller portions throughout the day. A healthy breakfast can jumpstart your metabolism, while eating small healthy meals (rather than the standard of three large meals) keeps youir energy up.

Avoid eating at night. Try to eat dinner earlier and fast for 14-16 hours until breakfast the next morning. Studies suggest that eating only when you're most active and giving your digestive system a long break each day may help to regulate weight.

Healthy Eating Tip 3: Fill up on colorful fruits and vegetables

Fruits and vegetables are lowin calories and nutrient dense, which means they are packed with vitamiins, minerals, antioxidants, and fiber. Focus on eating the recommended daily minimum of fiver servings of fruit and vegetables and it will naturally fill you up and help you cut back on unhealthy foods. a serving is half a cup of raw fruit or a small apple or banana, for example. Most of us need to double the amount we currently eat.

Try to eat a rainbow of fruits and vegetables every day as deeply colored fruits and vegetables contain hugher concentrations of vitamins, minerals, and antioxidants. Add berries to breakfast cereals, eat fruit for dessert, and sack on vegetables such as carrots, snow peas, or cherry tomatoes instead of processed snack foods.

Greens. Branch out beyond lettuce; get kale, mustard greens, broccoli, and chinese cabbage because they are all packed with calcium, magnesium, iron, postassium, zinc, and vitamin A, C, E, and K.

Unhealthy carbs (or bad carbs) are foods such as white flour, refined sugar, and white rice that have been stripped of all bran, fiber, and nutrients. They digest quickly and case spikes in blood sugar levels and energy

Tips for eating more healthy carbs

Try mixing grains as a first step to switching to whole grains. If whole grains like brown rice and wheat pasta don't sound good at first, start by mixing what you normally use with the whole grains. You can gradually increase the whole grain to 100%.

Avoid: Refined foods such as breads, pastas, and breakfast cereals that are not whole grain.

Healthy Eating Tip 5: Enjoy healthy fats and avoid unhealthy fats

Add to your healthy diet

Monounsaturated fats, from plant oils like canola oil, peanut oil, as well as avacados, nuts (like almonds, hazelnuts, and pecans), and seeds (such as pumpkin and sesame).

Polyunsaturated fats, including Omega-3 and Omega-6 fatty acids, found in fatty fish, such as salmon, herring, mackerel, anchovies, sardines, and some cold water fish oil supplements. Other sources of polyunsaturated fats are unheated sunflower, corn, soybean, flaxseed oils, and walnuts.

Welcome to the Youth Section of the Kahnawake Schools Diabetes Prevention Project wesbite~! The goal of KSDPP is to offer the youth activities, ideas, information on how they can make healthier decisions when it comes ot eating and physical health.

This section is being added to and will be updated shortly~!

If you would like to see more activities, or have some ideas. let us know -